A very neighbourly Open House for Deepavali

Last night, my neighbour Selvam and Lina hosted a Deepavali open house party that lasted until 3.00 p.m this morning with plenty of food, drink and multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-national friendship because Lina (second from right) is a Filipino Catholic.

I always enjoy conversing with Filipinos because I used to visit Manila since 1985 as an Australian student activist, campaigner for East Timor's national self-determination, media forum speaker (once together with the always-more-patriotic-than-thou Datuk Rejal Arbee) as well as senior journalist (left) who covered the 1996 APEC Summit which was attended by the ex-Presidents of China and US, Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton.

There are always romantic and nostalgic stories, like singing and marching with the anti-Marcos masses in the streets of Manila on 14 Feb, 1986, the life living in University of the Philippines' Diliman campus (left) while attending the 1st Asia-Pacific Conference on East Timor (APCET1) in June 1994 and the many political and ideological debates in pubs (and glad to come out safe and alive everytime), to recall and share.